e.e. cummings, you make me cry

went to a bookstore today via bus in downtown portland for far too long. spent hours reading poetry and bought an e.e. cummings book for $9.50, plus no tax because tax sucks and portland rules. i cried a few times because Don McKay, Charles Bukowski, and E.E. Cummings stole my heart with their words. or rather, stole my words with their hearts.
i was there for a total of three hours, and i only left the poetry section once to make a phone call. i think i stole poetry but in a way where it's probably very legal. does copying poems into the last few pages of my moleskin count as stealing? i felt somehow guilty for doing so instead of actually buying the books.
leaving tomorrow at 5 A.M. homeward bound. home to santa rosa, then to san francisco, back to rohnert park, back to santa rosa, and off to new york where i will be for the next 5 months. cold, because right now it's probably a few below 20 degrees. cold, because i'll be without certain people who light up my life in a very warm way. i'll be cold without them.
i fell in love with portland almost as much as i fell in love with new york. it's crazy to see how different people are in different places. i'll live here someday, soon, i know. after, maybe before, i come back home to live in the bay area. we'll see when this all unravels, or rather, ravels.
i miss the memories that were so good and so great. spokane was nothing like i ever expected or ever imagined, let alone was anywhere i ever thought i'd end up until i was standing on an icy sidewalk, hungover and sharing a cigarette and smoking a bowl with good friends. a situation where i had no time to imagine all the possibilities and one of the few times in my life where i let things just happen as they evolve. this has all evolved so hopelessly into a something i had no time to imagine. years ahead is somewhere i am afraid to even think about, but where i am anxious to be. time is love, and love is time. i have a feeling we'll both be there in the end.





it is so long since my heart has been with yours
shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town---

that i have perhaps forgotten
how,always(from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh)Love
coins His most gradual gesture

and whittles life to eternity

---after which our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories



e.e.
cummings